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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Eagleton, what becomes the "panacea for all problems" as part of the romantics' aesthetic theory at the turn of the eighteenth century?
(a) The image.
(b) The word.
(c) The text.
(d) The symbol.

2. According to Eagleton, what is ironic about those who complain of the difficulty of literary theory?
(a) "That those who complain are often civilised and educated."
(b) "That those who complain would not expect to understand a textbook of biology or chemical engineering."
(c) "That those who complain would expect to understand a textbook of biology or chemical engineering."
(d) "That those who complain are often uncivilised and uneducated."

3. The German philosopher Edmund Husserl argued that objects can be regarded as things ______ by consciousness.
(a) Intended.
(b) Evaluated.
(c) Understood.
(d) Realized.

4. According to Eagleton, William Empson "insists on treating poetry as a species of ______language."
(a) Spectacular.
(b) Religious.
(c) Ordinary.
(d) Secular.

5. What role does reception theory examine?
(a) The author's role.
(b) The critic's role.
(c) The teacher's role.
(d) The reader's role.

6. According to Eagleton, "in the terminology of reception theory, the reader _________ the literary work, which is in itself no more than a chain of organized black marks on a page."
(a) Concretizes.
(b) Rationalizes.
(c) Terrorizes.
(d) Sanitizes.

7. What is the name of the pioneering essay the Russian formalist wrote that is the "beginnings of the transformation which has taken over literary theory in this century"?
(a) Film as Thought.
(b) Literature as Image.
(c) Theory as Practise.
(d) Art as Device.

8. The distinction between fact and fiction in defining literature is what?
(a) Difficult.
(b) Important.
(c) Complicated.
(d) Questionable.

9. Who is the key figure in the Victorian period Eagleton cites as "preternaturally aware of the needs of his social class"?
(a) Matthew Arnold.
(b) George Gordon.
(c) William Morris.
(d) Percy Shelley.

10. Eagleton argues that the readership his book has attracted dispels the notion that literary theory is what?
(a) Simple.
(b) Boring.
(c) Elitist.
(d) Misguided.

11. According to Eagleton, why is E.D. Hirsch able to maintain his view that literary meaning is absolute and resistant to historical change?
(a) Because meaning is viewed as pre-historic.
(b) Because meaning is viewed as pre-modern.
(c) Because meaning is viewed as pre-arranged.
(d) Because meaning is viewed as pre-linguistic.

12. Eagleton argues that a literary work in Romantic society becomes what rather than rational and mechanical?
(a) Progressive.
(b) Spontaneous.
(c) Ideological.
(d) Interesting.

13. What year did Terry Eagleton's "Literary Theory: An Introduction" first appear?
(a) 1943.
(b) 1983.
(c) 1963.
(d) 1993.

14. What period did our own definition of literature begin to emerge, according to Eagleton?
(a) Enlightenment period.
(b) Romantic period.
(c) Modernist period.
(d) Victorian period.

15. Eagleton argues that the criteria for what counted as literature in the eighteenth-century was what?
(a) Canonical.
(b) Practical.
(c) Religious.
(d) Ideological.

Short Answer Questions

1. What "twin impacts" does Eagleton cite in the mid-Victorian period that was particularly worrisome to the ruling class?

2. By the early 1930s, the study of English literature became what kind of pursuit?

3. Who developed hermeneutics?

4. What is the name of the economist Eagleton discusses in his preface?

5. How do linguists describe the effect of language where "the texture, rhythm and resonance of words are in excess of their abstractable meaning."

(see the answer keys)

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